Justine Larbalestier

reading, writing, eating, drinking, sport

Black Wednesday

Well, yesterday was crazy. People I know lost their jobs or are now in danger of doing so. Some author friends lost their imprints. It’s all scary stuff. But publishing is not the only industry in convulsions. We’re in a recession. It’s bad all over.

To answer those asking if I still stand by Tuesday’s comments. I do. Things are bad, but they’re less bad for children’s than for adults’. Publishing is going to change a lot over the next decade.

But here’s my main source of comfort: People are always going to want stories.

My sympathies to everyone who had a really bad day yesterday.

Posted by Justine at 11:26, 4 December 2008 under New York City/USA, Publishing business, State of the World | 4 Comments »

Comments

  1. Electric Landlady Says:

    It’s very upsetting and my sympathies go out to everyone involved. I did have to giggle a bit at this line (from your second link), though:

    “Mr. Mehta’s empire will expand to include the Doubleday and Nan A. Talese imprints, merging authors like Margaret Atwood and Jonathan Lethem with Knopf’s writers, like John Updike and Toni Morrison.”

    Margaret Morrison? Jonathan Updikem?

  2. Rebecca Says:

    This is just scary.

  3. caitlin Says:

    This is scary. Where’s the bailout for the publishing industry? I don’t drive, but I inhale books. Very sad especially since I am a bookseller.

Trackbacks & Pingbacks

  1. [...] Insiders left standing soldier on. [...]

    Pingback from requiem « books in the works on 2 January, 2009 at 12:55 am

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a Reply

Subscribe to this post's comments by RSS

Spam filters ate your comment? Let me know and I will rescue it.

<-- -->